Year 2019 was really nice. I met someone special, travelled, was accepted to study Masters in Psychology at university, moved to beautiful Oxford and got engaged.

Then 2020 arrived: Covid, my brain tumour increased further in size, I had to pause my studies, started seven-and-a-half-weeks of radiotherapy at the very peak of the global pandemic. The treatment lead to swelling, which would have killed me if I hadn’t had an emergency operation in Prague. I ended up with a VP shunt, that drains excess CNS fluid down to the belly, and on a wheelchair.

So, 2020 was pretty rubbish. No… it was fucking shit.

You might be wondering why I’m writing this. You probably expected something optimistic and cheerful. Sorry to disappoint you, I’ll try to elaborate upon the old saying: when life gives you lemons, make a lemonade. During all these years living with this chronic illness, I have realised a few things. Life is not always fair. Seneca said, “sometimes even to live is an act of courage.” I agree.

One of the most important books I’ve read is Victor Frankl’s, Man’s Search For Meaning. Frankl was a neurologist and a psychiatrist from Vienna. During the WWII, the nazis sent him through the Theresienstadt ghetto to Auschwitz. The Holocaust murdered both of his parents, brother and wife. When, after the war, returning to Austria, he founded ‘logotherapy’. A form of psychotherapy, which significantly modifies our view on life and the role we play in it. One of the biggest messages is that it doesn’t matter what the fate might bring, what matters are our actions and adaptation to change. That’s the only way to reach a meaningful existence.

Either, we could have the victim mentality, perceiving living as a sheer suffering. Or try to seek a path among all the obstacles. Suffering will cease being suffering in the moment it gains meaning. Even in a situation, which doesn’t contain a way out, such as a concentration camp or a terminal illness, we still posses our free mind. If we are not able to change our situation, we can adapt our attitude. To transform a personal tragedy in to a triumph.

When we talk about the life meaning, we don’t mean an abstract concept but each individual calling/vocation. Frankl used to say: nowadays we have means but no meaning. That’s not a good way to live. How I already mentioned, everyday events are not fair and we never know what awaits behind a corner.

I am prepared to face the worst and try to find joy, daily, in every little thing. When the sun shows up, I prepare a lovely cup of coffee, the passerby smiles at me, I pet a dog, see something interesting or provocative, listen to a nice song, eat a delicious lunch and meet a friend who I haven’t seen in years. These are my little moments of everyday happiness. Life is the way we create it to be. Everyone of us is a conductor of our own contentment. According to Confucius, “we all have two lives, and the second begins the moment we realise we only have one.”